It was in the nostrils of the Cleveland Indians, who sensed the opportunity to go for the kill and take a 3-0 stranglehold in the best-of-seven American League Championship Series.

Blood was quite literally on the hands of Tribe starter Trevor Bauer, whose drone-damaged pinky finger barely held together through one Jays hitter.

And in the end, after a deflating 4-2 defeat before a sellout crowd of 49,507, blood was on the hands of the Jays batters, who once again came up small against the Central Division champions.

In short, it’s now a bloody mess for the Jays, who need a win here late on Tuesday afternoon to avoid being swept by the Indians and for the second consecutive year not advancing past the ALCS and into the World Series.

“We're going to have to do it as a unit, get some runs across,” said Jays catcher Russell Martin of a team that has scored just three in three games. “Nothing much really surprises me in this game anymore. I definitely expected to score some more runs. Maybe we're saving it for Games 5, 6 and 7. It's not over.”

It sure looks, feels and smells that way, however.

In the deepest of holes, the Jays will attempt to extend the series on Tuesday with starter Aaron Sanchez on the mound. But the long-view odds are beyond grim, both in historical context and the Jays performance over the previous four days.

The 2004 Boston Red Sox are the only team in MLB history to overcome a 3-0 deficit in a best-of-seven series, with their epic ALCS comeback over the Yankees. And that team was managed by Indians skipper Terry Francona who will no doubt be preaching the perils of a 3-0 lead on Tuesday.

“We’ve got our work cut out for us,” Jays manager John Gibbons said afterwards. “We’ll run the boys out there tomorrow. They got us here to this point. They're due.”

While the Jays and their fans were waiting for the big bats to awaken -- hello Jose Bautista, Edwin Encarnacion and Josh Donaldson -- the Indians were doing the same.

Mike Napoli and Jason Kipnis were a combined 0-for-13 in the ALCS before noisily checking in as the series shifted north of the border for Games 3, 4 and if necessary, one more. Both hit solo home runs on Monday and an RBI double from Napoli in the first inning got the Indians on board, sustaining the momentum from the two narrow wins back in Cleveland.

Jays starter Marcus Stroman wasn’t dynamite, but he allowed just three hits through 5 1/3 innings. Unfortunately, those three were the blasts described above.

The Jays managed to scatter seven hits and were helped by a Michael Saunders home run in the second inning to fire up the leery crowd under the closed dome. Other than that, the slugging offence that this team lives and dies by remained mostly dormant.

Time after time, the Jays came up flat with easy pop ups and ground outs.

Take the bottom of the third as a representation. After a Bautista single to start things off, the Jays' two, three and four hitters responded with meek popups.

When lethal Indians reliever Andrew Miller -- he of five strikeouts in each of the first two games of the series -- came in with two down in the bottom of the eighth, the gloom in the dome was palpable.

The powerful lefty has been dominant this post-season and the management of Miller and the rest of the Indians staff was brilliant by Francona.

Miller’s strikeout of Martin, the first batter he faced, was the 11th of 13 Jays he’s faced over the three games and an ALCS single-series record. Miller, the final of seven Indians pitchers, added two more strikeouts in the ninth and that was that.

So now a Jays team that swept aside the Texas Rangers 3-0 in the ALDS, must find a way to stop an Indians team that has won six in a row in the post-season and nine overall. On Tuesday, Cleveland will start Corey Kluber, whose lethal slider stymied the Jays in Game 1.

On Monday, the Indians drew first blood -- literally and figuratively -- in the first inning. In the top half, a five-pitch leadoff walk by Stroman to Carlos Santana was as costly as you might expect.

When “circumstances” prevented Bautista from making a catch in right off a Mike Napoli blast, despite briefly having the ball in his glove, Santana made his way around for the first Cleveland run.

The home half of the first was ugly in a gory way. Bauer, the self-professed nerd who gashed himself with his drone last week, was a bloody mess.

The 11 stitches used to mend the wound had clearly burst and there was blood everywhere -- on his Indians uniform, his sock, the pitcher’s rubber, the baseball. Gibbons hailed the umpires to protest and Bauer’s evening was done early.

Bauer’s exit may have offered a glimmer of hope to the Jays hitters, but they weren’t able to take advantage. Saunders' shot to left that just cleared the wall in the second inning showed some promise, but the rest of the lineup wasn’t able to back it up.

The Jays managed to tie it at 2-2 in the fifth after a leadoff triple by Ezequiel Carrera was followed by a chopper up the middle from Ryan Goins that brought the Toronto left fielder home.

But the Indians, who have hit a home run in each of their six post-season games this fall, went deep again in the sixth, this time on a Kipnis rip to right field.

It was just the fourth time in Stroman’s career that he had allowed more than one home-run in a game and it came at the worst possible moment, given his own team’s inability to pound bat to ball.

If there are any signs of that changing, they’ve yet to emerge. And with first pitch for Game 4 coming at 4:08 p.m. on Tuesday, hopes aren’t particularly high that those changes will arrive on time.

“They know what’s at stake,” Gibbons said. “They worked hard to get to this point. One thing we know is that they are resilient. They will be out there (on Tuesday.)”